The Power Opera House Fire.
(Communicated to FIRE AND WATER.)
The press dispatches no doubt have brought to you the story of the destruction by fire of Power's Opera House in this city, the largest theatre in western Michigan. There are some facts connected with the fire, however, that you have not heard. At four o’clock in the afternoon of the fire, Ed. Warrington, the watchman, entered the pit under the stage with a number of his assistants for the purpose of clearing out the accumulated rubbish. He lit a match and turned the key of the gas jet, but there was no gas to light. Unknown to him the meter had been taken out in the morning, but he groped his way into the dark corner where it belongei, found the stopcock of the gas main and turned it wide open. The match in his hand was stilfi smouldering and when the great volume of gas rushed out into the room it instantly exploded and the large open pipe became a spouting flame. Warrington was driven backward by the rush of the fire, his hair burned about his head, his eyelashes, eyebrows and moustache badly singed. The skin on his face was also blistered. Shouting to his assistants for water he paused to get his breath and then crawled back to the source of the flame, and reaching up turned off the stopcock. By this time the woodwork under the stage was all ablaze, and all efforts to put it out were unavailing. While the men were running to turn in an alarm, the fire ciept through the floor and the long tongues of flame licked the scenery and shot upward like lightning, filling the house with rolling billows of fire.
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